Childhood Trauma And How The Environment Affects Their Learning

Incidents like abuse from family members, bullying, neglect, and sexual abuse are the most common. Repeated abuse can lead to psychological damage and emotional scarring. Not only are traumatic psychological experiences causing these juveniles to commit violent crimes. Situations, where children have poor education, a household without discipline, peer pressure, inadequate role models, low income, and substance abuse coupled with the wrong environment, can lead to a life of crime. These negative influences guide these juveniles on the wrong path towards crime. However, it does not mean these juveniles cannot succeed; it is however up to the juvenile to make the correct choices in their

The juvenile justice system can be dated back to the late 18th and early 19th century. Youths were confined to jails with mentally ill and hardened criminals because there were no other alternatives for them. Many of these youths were in these institutions for non-violent offenses. During this same time, many American cities had to find a solution to the overwhelming rate of child neglect. Today, there is still much debate about the well-being of youths in the criminal justice system. The juvenile justice system plays an important role in society because it allows youths the opportunity to change their behavior. The current system is effective in providing programs for juveniles in an effort to

Juvenile Delinquents are being incarcerated at earlier ages as time progresses. The term delinquent speaks of two or more youths, typically amongst the ages of ten and seventeen years old, who are involved in doings well-defined as illegal. The study of juvenile delinquents in inner city Chicago have been studied for many years and the rates continue to sky rocket as juveniles are being locked down by the justice system. Cases of violence amongst juveniles has been increasing rapidly in the past 20 years, juveniles are now linked to severer crimes, and it can be speculated that regardless of efforts of rehabilitation that the recidivism of juveniles relapsing is very great. Thus leading to physiological and mental problems that can be damaging to the youth as

Youth who come to the attention of the juvenile justice system are often a challenging and underserved population. While not all youth who experience trauma engage in delinquent activity, and vise versa, studies have shown that youth who are involved in the juvenile justice system have found to have higher rates of traumatic experiences. The National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice (NCMHJJ) reported that 2% of all children are victims of maltreatment, 13% are victims of neglect, and 11% are victims of physical, sexual, or emotional abuse (Ford et al., 2007). NCMHJJ also reports that over 90% of youth involved with the juvenile justice system report having experienced at least one traumatic incident (Ford et al., 2007). In addition,

& Li, 2001). With the brain developing at its fastest rate in childhood, it is especially

It is the primary caregiver who the child first begins to develop these intra- and interpersonal processes with. Future success of social-emotional development in children, is dependent upon the “the presence of caregiver-child relationships,” and the consistent, reliable, and empathic, positive serve and return of the caregiver (Briggs, Silver, Krug, Mason, Schrag, et al, 2014). Caregivers who have experienced childhood trauma, have a decreased ability to provide this type of interaction. Therefore, a child’s social-emotional development is at risk. Due to the caregiver’s traumatic history, they may have an inability to effectively interpret a child’s emotional state, and they may inappropriately respond to a child’s attempt for interaction. This caregiver may respond by using negative parenting practices including severe physical and psychological aggression, or neglectful behaviors (Briggs et al.). Thus, through inadequate parenting techniques, caregivers continue the intergenerational cycle (Brigs et

This paper examines the effectiveness of the American justice system surrounding juvenile offenders not yet responsible for their punishable acts. Although the purpose of the juvenile justice system is the rehabilitate and deter juvenile offenders from breaking laws, evidence suggests the justice system is ineffective and unjust. The sentencing of juveniles is unjust and ineffective because juveniles are not mentally developed enough to make rational decisions, incarcerating juveniles is costly, and youth incarceration does not discourage youth from committing more crimes, and the incarceration of juveniles often results in mental and physical abuse of the youth.

Many juveniles in America are exposed every day to abuse, neglect, domestic violence, and poverty. These issues are a growing problem, and without successful intervention by a caring guardian these children will often struggle and fall into depression and desperateness. Frequently juveniles do not have the tools to manage the psychological and emotional challenges of adolescence, and they will ultimately engage in destructive or criminal behavior. In most cases the dysfunction that creates this delinquent behavior is ignored, and instead these kids lives are subjected to even further chaos when they are placed in the criminal justice system.

In the past several years researchers have found intervention strategies and program models that hope to prevent juvenile delinquency and promote good social attitudes and development (Greenwood, 2008). More than 1,000,000 adolescents go through the American Criminal court system every year and of those approximately 160,000 juvenile offenders are sent to juvenile placement centers (Henggeler & Schoenwald, 2011). The U.S. criminal justice system has been wise enough to realize that treatment programs need to be implemented in order to lessen recidivism in these young offenders and help ensure that they go on to live healthy productive lives.

Many children become familiar with the Juvenile Justice System without knowledge of why they continue to commit crimes. Many of them suffered years of being abuses, which caused socialization changes that pushed them to withdraw or act out. This research is important because it shows the long terms effects child abuse has on children that become juvenile delinquents. Statistics show increasing numbers of children who are the victims of child abuse and neglect, although they decrease in delinquency may reflect a greater nation focus on the issue and the use of more effective programs to attack the problem. This research is important to me because the Criminal Justice System doesn’t address the causes of deviant behavior in juvenile delinquents to its full potential. They rather just focus on policing and tough sanctions. Hopefully with this paper and many others child abuse can be prevented along with the long-term effects of child abuse and better programs can be invented to treat child abuse victims. The Office of Justice Programs came up with a “Safe Kids Safe Streets” Program, which acknowledge the correlation between child abuse and juvenile delinquency and is aimed at breaking the cycle of early childhood victimization and later delinquency (Safe

The effects of trauma can be looked at into two separate categories however, they both are interrelated: neurodevelopment and psychosocial development. From the onset of birth, we are born with 100 billion neurons, much more than we will ever need and much more than we will ever have. Between these neurons, trillions of synapses are created. Depending upon the early life experiences in relation to attachments with caregivers and our environment, some synapses will be strengthened whilst others will be discarded.

A great societal concern is criminal behavior in adolescence. The risk factors of youth criminality have become a rising interest. One of the most consistent factors associated with adolescent criminal behavior is child abuse. Crime related stress can start from a very young age and may not even affect an individual until much later on in adulthood. Evidence has shown that young people in America witness large amounts of violence at home and in their community. Evidence has also shown that recent exposure to violence in the community as well as a history of receiving traumatic news, recent life events, and to associate

In the United States, juvenile delinquency is becoming a major problem in the communities across the country. Because of the actions that these juveniles engage in on a regular basis, taxpayers across the country are having to shell out hundreds upon thousands of dollars to rehabilitate these children in order to help them make better choices. This leads citizens to wonder what factors actually cause juveniles to live a life of crime rather than success. In short, there are three main factors that often cause children to live a life of crime. These three factors are social influences, psychological characteristics, and academic potential.

Juvenile offending is a concern in society today. Juveniles account for approximately 19% of the population but are responsible for 29% of criminal arrests (Cottle, Lee, & Heilbrun, 2001). Crime overall has been found to be decreasing throughout the last two decades. The issue is that the rate in which adult crime is decreasing is significantly greater than the rate in which juvenile crime is decreasing. Since the rate of juvenile crime is so high, juvenile delinquents are seen as predators and many believe they lack morals. The way in which media of today’s society constructs juvenile delinquency impacts the views of a community towards their youth and youth offenders. Media presents an inaccurate image of youth offenders as violent predators (Rhineberger-Dunn, 2013). This inaccurate image significantly promotes the myths that juvenile crime is rising, juveniles commit crimes that are primarily violent, and that juveniles are highly effected by recidivism and continue committing crimes into adulthood (Bohm, & Walker, 2013). It has already been stated though that crime rates have been decreasing over the last two decades so the first myth is refuted. The myth that juveniles primarily commit violent crimes is also very off. In most cases, juveniles are involved in property crimes and although there are some violent crime cases, they are very rare. When these rare violent crimes do occur, youth can be tried in adult court. The

As stated by Bartol and Bartol “Juvenile delinquency is an imprecise, nebulous, social, clinical, and legal label for a wide variety of law- and norm-violating behavior” (2011, Pg 139). The juvenile delinquency term has come to imply disgrace in today's correctional institution. Our government is up hold to procedures and expected to come with a solution to solving the delinquent problem. An underage offender can be labeled a delinquent for breaking any number of laws, ranging from robbery to running away from home, and especially being involved in school violence. The following situations faced by correction officials when dealing with juvenile delinquents will be examined. Three main areas (child development, punishments, and deterrence